Living With Less: Brett Oblack

Were you a minimalist before you
met your wife? How has minimalism impacted your relationship?

My transition to minimalism actually began shortly before my marriage. I was examining my spending habits and credit card debt and realized that I couldn’t possibly continue to spend the same way after getting married without causing serious problems. I was stressed out about my spending because I felt like I hadn’t fully expressed the truth yet. After coming clean about the credit card debt I had, we dug out of it pretty quickly, established shared finances and have been on the same page financially ever since then.

Have you set any goals for your minimalistic lifestyle?

I do believe in the 100 thing challenge and currently live with less than 100 personal items, but don’t spend a lot of time talking about it because I still have a house full of shared items with my wife. By no means could I pack up all of our belongings into two backpacks. That being said, I’ve reduced the amount of possessions I’ve owned by a tremendous amount. Now, everything I own is fairly high quality and actually meaningful and practical to my life. Most of the money I spend now tends to be on fun activities with my wife like camping. As far as other minimalist goals, I do have a lot of goals for Step 1 Minimalist and my writing there, as far as gaining new readers and continuing to provide quality content.

In a recent post you mentioned that minimalists should make money work for them. How do you make your money work for you?

I keep things as simple as possible so I’m not spending a lot of time worrying about our finances. My wife and I have zero consumer debt and save a good percentage of our income each month. People are often frightened of budgets and tracking their spending, but as a minimalist I spend so little and have so few transactions throughout the month that it is relatively easy for me to do both of those things. I think when people are trying to establish a budget, they should keep it very basic. Most online budget templates have dozens and dozens of categories. The budget I’ve set up has roughly ten categories, making it quick and easy to keep track of spending. The more complex and intimidating a budget is, the less likely someone is to actually use it. Our investments are also very simple, and get paid into automatically, letting our money grow without too much thought or work on my part.

Some people think that being vegetarian is not simple or minimalistic
because it takes more time to cook a vegetarian meal. Do you agree? How has your health benefited from being a vegetarian?

Before becoming vegetarian, almost every meal I ate was fast food, frozen or out of a box. Was it easy? Sure. Was it healthy? Absolutely not. Almost every meal I eat now I’ve cooked from scratch personally at home. My health has benefited in obvious ways like weight reduction, but also in subtler ways like having more focus and creativity and energy. Plus, I actually know how to cook now! I would argue that cooking every meal at home is minimalistic because I don’t rely on getting my food in a box from a factory across the country.

What inspires you to write?

I always have ideas rattling around in my head for many different projects. Beside the need to get them out, there are a lot of great writers that are truly inspirational to me, both in fiction and non-fiction. I spent five years working in used,  independent bookstores and have come across a huge variety of amazing authors. Pushing myself to write something half as compelling as some of my favorite authors keeps me going.

Would you have had the time or motivation 5 years ago to write Consume Less, Create More?

Five years ago I didn’t have the time or motivation to complete much of anything. Prioritizing tasks also was something I had a lot of trouble with and I never would have been able to break a project like this down into manageable steps. In addition to all that, I had no creative ideas of my own even had I wanted to try and complete something like this. I really believe that anyone can be creative if they work at it. There seems to be this myth that only certain people were born to be artists, when in reality any of us can be if we simply take the time to stop filling our lives with trivial wastes of our time, money and energy.

In the spirit of minimalism, what would you keep if you could only live
with:

5 books: